Awarded to Orange Maple Ltd

Improving the Pay My Rent service to increase the number of people who pay online

Incomplete applications

6

Incomplete applications

4 SME, 2 large

Completed applications

9

Completed applications

7 SME, 2 large

Important dates

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Published

Wednesday 27 June 2018

Deadline for asking questions

Wednesday 4 July 2018 at 11:59pm GMT

Closing date for applications

Wednesday 11 July 2018 at 11:59pm GMT

Overview

Overview

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Summary of the work

Delivering improvements to the online rent account service to increase the number of users who pay online.

Latest start date

Monday 30 July 2018

Expected contract length

3 months

Location

London

Organisation the work is for

Hackney Council

Budget range

Up to £80,000 excluding VAT for this phase of work, and an additional budget available for support and maintenance of the solution, if required,

About the work

About the work

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Why the work is being done

Hackney Council launched an online Rent Account service in October. Since then it has been used 50,000 times by 12,000 people. However, just 27% have tried to make a payment on the service and 36% of people have failed to complete an online payment.

We want to explore how we might increase payments through personalised notifications and an easier payment process.

Problem to be solved

- 80% of users access the service on a mobile, but the current payment gateway is not optimised for mobile- We do not provide messages to users of the service, beyond their rent data- There are constraints in the user interface as a result of using the lowcode platform

Who the users are and what they need to do

As a tenant I need to know my balance so that I can avoid falling into arrearsAs a tenant I need persuasive reminders so that I understand the importance of making timely paymentsAs a user I need an easy way to pay online so that it is so easy, I prefer to do so

Early market engagement

The current version of the service was built by a team including in-house staff (who are still available to help), contractors and experts provided by FutureGov.

We are interested in using GOV.UK Pay as an easier to use payment gateway, but aware that delays in updating the user's balance (on reconciling it with the Council's finance system) may degrade the experience.

Any work that’s already been done

The service is built using Outsystems, a low code platform. It consumes APIs for our tenants and their balances from Universal Housing, the housing management application. These APIs are documented at https://github.com/LBHackney-IT. We are open to alternative approaches to technology that better meet user needs.

We are building a case management solution to support income collection, which will include an algorithm to identify likely to pay their balance and prioritise cases that require human intervention and a CRM for tenancy contact.

We are developing an OAUTH single sign-on module to improve access to council services.

Existing team

Head of Service (project sponsor)Product OwnerDelivery Manager (who is also Delivery Manager for the tenancy CRM project)Frontline staff as required

Current phase

Live

Work setup

Work setup

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Address where the work will take place

Hackney Council offices in Mare Street, E8

Working arrangements

We would expect the supplier to work onsite for the majority of the engagement, enabling them to share their work with social care colleagues and test propositions with residents.

Security clearance

Additional information

Additional information

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Additional terms and conditions

Skills and experience

Buyers will use the essential and nice-to-have skills and experience to help them evaluate suppliers’ technical competence.

Skills and experience

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Essential skills and experience

Provide a multi-disciplinary team, including user research, service design and front-end developer

Adopt user-centred design and Agile approaches, consistent with the govenrment’s service design manual

Have built a product that’st been assessed as meeting a government digital service standard

Understand how to meet the needs of a range of users, including those lacking digital skills

Be agnostic of any particular software, enabling us to consider a range of options to meet user needs

Share their work freely and openly with the Council and the wider community

Experience of behavioural economics

Nice-to-have skills and experience

Promote user-centred design and Agile across the Council

How suppliers will be evaluated

How suppliers will be evaluated

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How many suppliers to evaluate

3

Proposal criteria

Understanding of user needs from the service

Clarity of the approach

Experience from a similar project

Team structure, including skills, experiences and relevance of individuals

Identification of risks and plan to mitigate them

Cultural fit criteria

Work as a team with our organisation and other suppliers

Be transparent and collaborative when making decisions

Share knowledge and experience with team members and the wider service

Payment approach

Capped time and materials

Assessment methods

Written proposal

Evaluation weighting

Technical competence

60%

Cultural fit

5%

Price

35%

Questions asked by suppliers

Questions asked by suppliers

Supplier question

Buyer answer

1.
You mention that the service is built in Outsystems, low code platform - do you envisage retaining this platform?

We don't have a fixed view on this. It's important we understand first how the service needs to be improved to better meet user needs and then what technology best enables us to do that, in the most efficient way.

2.
You state that the supplier should work on site for the majority of the 3 month engagement - do you envisage this being every day?

No. In our experience 3-4 days a week onsite will be sufficient. The importance of co-location is:- developing a shared understanding of user needs - supporting the embedding of user-centred, Agile approaches- helping the team understand how to support the application- aligning with the other pieces of work, particularly the CRM project

3.
Is this piece of work just to review the usability of the current process and propose a new UI…. Rather than propose a new technology toolkit as well?

The take-up figures suggest a fundamental review of the UI is unnecessary. The primary aim of this work is to increase the proportion of users that can use the app to make a payment, first time, unaided. We assume this will require amendments to the UI and potentially changes to the technology toolkit too, and have set the budget so that option is available.

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